A/N: I thank all the beautiful humans who reviewed and told me what you thoughts of my twists and changes.
I reward you with this (not so) long awaited uppdate.
Enjoy.
Target 2:
The fire burning inside
A tall, dark man walked down the roads of Italy, his fedora shadowing his eyes but a content smirk was playing on his lips.
He was a very handsome man, dressed in a black suit with a matching black fedora perched on his head. His hands rested inside his pockets as he strode straight into the closest pub, not even bothering to spare a glance at the figure following him.
Throwing up the doors to the pub, all activity inside stopped as they all turned to stare at him.
Two suited men smirked at the sight of him.
"Reborn." one of the men greeted, raising his shot glass towards the man. "Got yourself a new job?"
"Ah." the man confirmed with a sharp nod, his voice booming over the silence as he confidently took a few more steps into the building.
"Where is it now?" the other man asked, glancing at Reborn from the corner of his eye. "Rome? Venice?"
"Japan." Reborn answered casually, never eve taking his hands out from his pockets.
"Japan!" the two men immediately reacted, looks of shock plastered over their faces.
"That old man finally managed to make the lion give in?"
Reborn allowed himself to chuckle lightly at their reactions.
"This is going to be a long trip." he mused.
At that moment, the man that had followed Reborn decided to finally step out of the shadows, a knife raised high above his head.
Giving off a cry in attack, he prepared to stab the man, but he didn't even get the chance.
The very next second, the knife was knocked out of his hand as the bones in his wrist snapped, the second that followed he was lying on the floor, twitching in pain, clutching at his broken wrist as he stared up at Reborn, eyes full of fear.
All Reborn did, was smirk.
Oh, he was going to have fun when in Japan.
A week and a half after she woke up in that hospital bed, Tsuna was finally allowed to return home with her mother.
Her mother had informed her that the two bookshelves she had ordered before she got shot had arrived while she was out, so they were there, waiting for her in her bedroom for her to put the together and fill them with what still lay scattered over her floor.
The dresser she had also ordered had yet to arrive but her Mom believed that it wouldn't take long before that too arrived.
Standing in front of her bedroom door, Tsuna felt somewhat uncomfortable, wondering weather or not she should actually open the door and face the mess she knew would meet her on the other side.
After having been locked up in the all-too-clean hospital for so long, the mess that she was so used to before would most likely feel so much worse.
Finally, she shook her head, banishing her foreboding notions and decided to get it over with.
With that though, she put her hand on the door-handle and practically shoved it open.
Just like she had expected, the mess felt immense.
The piles of papers and books suddenly felt so much larger than how they had felt the last time she had seen them.
However...
She turned her head towards the two large boxes that held her new bookshelves.
That little factor would son be dealt with.
Taking in a deep breath, she rolled up the sleeves of her white cardigan and practically attacked the boxes, only sparing a thought to fetch a pair of scissors from on top of her desk (the drawers were full of underwear, socks and things that should go into the dresser she still didn't have) before she ripped open the cardboard to reach the golden-brown lacquered wood that made up the bookshelves she was going to put together.
Now, Tsunako was by no means an unintelligent young woman. She understood and followed all the lectures at school perfectly fine, and so, she was able to understand and follow the instructions for the shelves perfectly fine as well.
It was, after all, not the first piece of furniture she had to put together herself, with her father not being around and all.
Within an hour, both of the shelves had been put together, as well as screwed onto their own sides of the corner to the right of her bedroom door.
Stepping back, Tsuna allowed herself to feel proud over her work. Then she looked down at her feet and reminded herself that her hard work had only just begun.
At 06:45pm, Nana knocked on her daughters bedroom door with a tray of juice and sandwiches resting on her left forearm. She didn't wait for an invitation and just walked in.
What met her eyes, was something she had never expected to see in her daughter's bedroom.
Tsuna was standing in front of her shelves, carefully placing what appeared to be the last stack of books into the shelf on the same wall as the door. She didn't have a particular order for the books but Nana suspected her daughter wasn't thinking about any specific order at the moment, she just wanted the books off the floor.
And the difference was quite startling.
All the discarded papers had either been thrown away for being useless or put into binders and folders now stacked on the shelf her daughter was not facing together with all the notebooks, diaries and sketch-books. Nana could spot the antique porcelain dolls Tsuna had received for her eight, ninth and tenth birthdays sitting on top of the shelf. There were seven dolls in total, in varying sizes and design, though they were all equally beautiful.
Her daughter had taken great care of them through the years.
Looking at those dolls, Nana couldn't help but to sweep her eyes over the bedroom, her eyes locking on the white plush bunny with the orange ribbon tied around it's neck. Tsuna has had that thing since Nana had made it for her for her sixth birthday.
Next to the bunny (Whom Nana distinctly remembered had been named Shiro) on the bedside table, stood the antique music-box that basically was basically just a porcelain spinning ballet dancer (not an actual box) that was winded up with the strange, golden, crest-like key necklace that Tsuna always, always wore around her neck.
Her eyes continued, this time freezing on the antique tea-set that was actually real china that Iemitsu had bought for Tsuna-chan when she had reached that age where girl's liked to have tea-parties, the set was stationed right next to a beautiful, antique, silver decorated trinket box with Tsuna's name engraved on the lid, in which Nana knew Tsuna kept something special (it was just that Tsuna refused to show that object to anyone, not even her mother).
Continuing with her sweep, her eyes well on the large mahogany jewelry box that had been temporarily stationed on top of the coffee-table at the center of the room, it's multiple compartments folded out, ready to be filled with the pieces of jewelry still scattered all over the room.
These were all gifts from Iemitsu, apology gifts for not being around really.
He used to mostly send her toys. Beautiful, antique toys, until she entered her teen years at which point he began to send her clothing, jewelry, make-up, shoes, accessories. Everything a teenage girl could ever wish for.
Most of the toys were now packed away in the attic, like that beautiful, large antique Victorian doll-house and that antique rocking-horse shaped like a beautiful white mere. It was a shame that they had to be packed away but Tsuna felt that they would take too much place (even though Nana could see that she hadn't wanted to pack away those two particular objects) and so, they were gathering dust at the moment.
Nana couldn't help but to smile at her daughters bedroom, even though accessories, make-up, shoes and clothing were still scattered over the floor (she really should get her her own laundry-basket). The room screamed teenager by the TV and laptop, not to mention the mirror practically covered by discarded garments, but the things she kept for decoration showed that she had kept a certain amount of innocence from her childhood years.
Not only the toys showed off her innocence.
Her daughter really had a fondness for the light, soft colors. White, light blue, light pink, light green and light yellow. Even though her favorite color would forever remain orange, she had told Nana that too much orange for an extended period of time would only make her hate the color, and thus, her bedroom was decorated with the softer colors, the calmer colors.
She was an artistic child after all.
"I like what you've done with the place." Nana remarked as she stepped over the hair-brush her daughter had long-since forgotten even existed, in order to reach the coffee-table.
Tsuna, after having putt the final book on the shelf, and thus filling the two shelves completely, finally allowed her aching arms to fall to her sides.
She turned towards her mother as she made to sit down on the chest at the foot of her bed (it was filled with sheets and covers for the bed so it was useless for any other storage).
"Now all that's missing is the dresser." the teenager breathed, brushing her tingling hands off on her jeans. They had been tingling ever since she began putting the shelves together, like the tingling you get when the blood returns to your limbs only... hotter (temperature wise).
"You going to gather up the jewelry now?" Nana asked, nodding towards the gaping jewelry-box.
Tsuna had received that thing for her fifteenth birthday, only by that time her jewelry was already scattered all over her room and she had just, never bothered looking for them through the mess.
Though, now, searching for the glimmering pieces of metal and fake gemstones would be much easier. In fact, she could already spot about twenty of them.
"That's the plan." Tsuna replied with what could only be described as a sigh of surrender.
From one task that required a lot of stretching upwards, she would directly move on to a task that required a lot of bending down.
Who knew cleaning could be such a workout?
Nana, whom had apparently noticed her daughter's exhausted expression, reached over to the tray and picked up the glass of pear juice. Standing up, she handed the glass to the teen.
"How about a little break first?" she asked gently with a smile. "Wouldn't want you ending up back at the hospital on your first day back home now would we?"
Tsuna smiled gratefully at her mother, taking the cup from her womans hands.
The cold liquid had chilled the glass, cooling down her tingling fingers.
Tsuna couldn't help the relieved sigh escaping her lips at the feel of the cold.
Wait... was that... sizzling?
Staring down at her hand, Tsuna thought, for a split second, that she saw a light mist streaming up from where her fingers touched the glass, but it was gone after she blinked.
Along with the tingling.
"Is something wrong?" Nana asked, successfully snapping her daughter out of her thoughts.
Looking up her mother, Tsuna hesitated before slowly shaking her head.
"No." she answered, looking back at the glass. "Nothing at all." she proved the point by bringing the glass up to her lips.
It was a little more room temperature than the coolness of the glass had lead her to believe, but it still worked wonders on her over-worked body.
The sweet taste of the juice brought a smile to her mouth. That particular type of juice has always had that power, ever since she was a baby and it was the first thing she had tasted that wasn't breast-milk (at least, according to Nana).
Seeing Tsuna's reaction, Nana reached out her hand to stroke her daughter over her terribly messy hair. It was such a shame that the girl never took the time to take care of it. Nana could remember when she had been the one to take care of the girl's hair, god how beautiful it had been then, shining in the sunlight as if it had been spun out of gold.
"You should really do something about this." Nana murmured, letting her fingers pinch the tips of Tsuna's hair, stroking them between her fingers.
This earned Nana an eye-roll.
Brushing off her mothers hand, Tsuna took another sip from her glass.
"Not now." she groaned. "Too much to do."
Nana sighed heavily, putting her hands on her hips.
"Alright." she gave. "But after you're done with the jewelry, I want you to take a long shower young lady." she almost raised her finger for empathies.
"Alright." was the only reply she got.
Tsuna put her glass down. Standing up, she began to push her mother out of her room.
"Good bye now."
The woman stopped herself in the doorway by grabbing hold of the frames, turning her head around to look at her daughter from the corner of her eye.
"And don't forget to brush your hair."
"I know." Tsuna groaned, pushing at her mothers back with a bit more force. "I'm not a child anymore, remember?"
"I know you're not honey, but-" she didn't get to finish her sentence as the last shove from Tsuna caused her to loose her grip on the door-frames and she tumbled into the hallway, turning around just in time to see her daughter shut the door behind her. "You're still my daughter." Nana finished to the silence of the hallway.
Really, their house was way to big for just the two of them.
Maybe she should put a room out for rent?
On the other side of the door, Tsuna leaned her back against the door, looking out over what remained of the mess.
"Alright floor." she muttered, brushing her filthy bangs from her face, a fire burning behind her light brown eyes. The tingling feeling in her hands returned. "It's time to show yourself again."
The week that followed her return home from the hospital, Tsuna pulled on her school uniform and dragged herself out of her room.
She would start going to school again, and to say that she felt nervous would be an understatement seeing as what happened the last time she went there. She just hoped to everything holy that Hibari Kyoya had put up a stronger search for any type of weapon when she was gone.
Sure enough, when she got through the gates of the school, she was met with one of the more authoritative black-clad members of the disciplinary committee Kusakabe Tetsuya.
Apparently, he recognized her.
"We need to check your bag for weapons." nodding towards the bag hanging over her shoulders, he had a kind look in his eyes. Almost as if he was feeling sorry for having to ask her such a question to her.
He held out his hand towards her.
"If you please."
Kusakabe Tetsuya had been raised into a well-bread family. He was one of the few people in the school that showed respect to everyone in the building, apart for those who break the rules of course. He was one of the few people that had stood up for her when he saw her getting bullied, and she was grateful to him for that.
He would become a good man one day.
Smiling gently, Tsuna allowed her bag to slide down her arm to her hand, closing her fingers around the straps, she held the bag up towards the older student.
Giving the bag a quick look-through, the disciplinary committee member handed the bag back.
"Sorry for the inconvenience." he offered.
Brushing her hair behind her ear as he put the bag back on her shoulder, she shook her head slightly.
In school, Tsuna always made an effort to appear as small as possible, to try and direct the attention away from her (not that it worked), but now, she was slowly straightening out her shoulders to look the elder student right in the eye (something that was very rare).
"No inconvenience." she assured him. "I may be the only ones who appreciates this."
Kusakabe gave her a look of understanding, a light nod before he jerked his head to the side, indicating that she should get a move on.
And she did.
Walking through the hallways of the school, Tsuna unconsciously made herself look even smaller than she had ever done before.
Why?
Because everyone, everyone were staring at her. Whispering.
"Hey, is that Dame-Tsuna?"
"Didn't she get shot?"
"I thought they said she died."
Closing off her ears to the whispers, Tsuna hurried over to her classroom, opening the door as quietly as she could, hoping that she wouldn't attract too much attention.
When was the last time her hopes came true?
The second she put one foot into the classroom, all eyes were on her.
She could feel herself freezing up, her fingers clutching at the straps of her bag so tight her nails were digging into the palms of her hands.
They were studying her. Their eyes moving all over her body, looking for something that Tsuna didn't feel like she wanted to know what it was.
Unconsciously, she took a step back.
She hadn't expected that she would back right into something hard, yet soft and warm at the same time. Something that put something feeling very similar to hands on her shoulders to keep her from moving from where she was standing.
Turning her head around, she found herself staring up at Yamamoto Takeshi's dark brown eyes.
He smiled widely down at her.
"Good to see you back Sawada."
The effect those words had on her... the feeling of someone actually being glad that she was there was kind of overwhelming. Her heart ached a little and she was forced to look away from the athlete because of it.
Taking the situation into his own hands, Yamamoto began pushing Tsuna into the classroom, through the rows of desks before he stopped in front of hers. There, he turned her around towards him and pushed her down into her chair.
"There." he said with a pleased look on his face. "Now the balance has been restored."
Then, with a pat on her shoulder, he turned toward his own desk, sat down, and the previous moment was forgotten.
Feeling a bit miffed, Tsuna shook her head before she let her bag slide down her arm for the second time that day, letting the thing rest on her lap as she started digging through it's content for her pencil-case and notebook.
There was still fifteen minutes until class started, so she wanted to do something doodling during that time.
She had just started to sketch on a head when a shadow fell over her page.
Looking up, she was met by the gaze of Takahashi.
Immediately, unpleasant memories flashed inside her head so violently that it forced her to drop her pencil and press her palm against her forehead in an attempt to calm herself down.
"Tsuna..." Takahashi's voice sounded slightly pleading. "I'm so sorry."
Looking up at the boy again, Tsuna found it rather uncomfortable that he had such a guilty look on his face.
"I know." she muttered, fiddling with her fingers.
She didn't want to look at him.
"I saw the flowers."
This seemed to make Takahashi feel better, so he walked away without saying another thing. But she found herself not caring. She actually felt relieved that she didn't have to talk to him anymore, the sound of the gun still rang through her head whenever she thought of his face.
Picking up her pen again, she continued sketching until their teacher walked through the door.
Coming back to school had been a lot easier than Tsuna had thought it would be. Everyone were pretty much indifferent about her return and no one had bothered her for two weeks now, letting her go about her days on her.
She still talked to those three every now and then, but they weren't friends. More like, acquaintances. Acquaintances that felt it strangely easy to talk to one another sure, but they weren't exactly friends either as they never met up outside of school.
During these two weeks, Tsuna has noticed a few things different about herself.
Usually, during P.E. She couldn't run for ten seconds without falling flat on her face.
But now...
Just last week, they were doing some high-jumping from a springboard. Something that she usually couldn't get over three levels.
Now...
When it was her turn, she had heard everyone snicker, expecting her to fail like she had done so much before. At that moment, she decided that she would show them what twelve years ballet lessons resulted in no matter what.
When she took off running, that was when she felt that tingling sensation again, only it was stronger than it had been when she was cleaning. The tingling returned to her fingers but the most surprising thing was, she felt lighter, like she had been carrying weights the whole day and suddenly, they simply fell off in the middle of her sprint.
She had practically flown, from the springboard she had gone so high up in the air that she had to flip in order to land right on the other side.
The silence had been deafening.
Even the coach had been shocked speechless at what she had just done, but of coarse, no one was more shocked than she was.
She had never jumped that high before, and her landing had been flawless. During her ballet classes, her landings had always been the one thing she had most trouble with as it required having a sense of balance more than standing on your tip-toes, and now... she didn't know what to think.
Had her sense of balance somehow returned to her after she was shot?
Then there was the test they took (who's results were returned to them yesterday), a test that Tsuna had fully expected to fail. However, when the paper was laid down in front of her, she found herself able to think clearly enough for her to be able to answer some of the question, through the constant tingling of her hands of course (seriously, what was up with that?) only the heat from the tingling was worse than before, it made her feel slightly feverish.
She had just barely passed.
Just that incident during P.E. This had shocked everyone in class, but unlike P.E. The one most shocked had been Nezu Dohachiro, their teacher whom had basically made it his personal mission to make Tsuna's life at school a living hell. Out of all the bullies in the school, he had always been the worst one, parading her failed scores around for everyone to see. Now, he didn't have anything he could parade around.
She had almost laughed at him and the face he had pulled when he realized that she had passed, barely, but she had still passed.
These incidences made everyone in her class realize that the Dame-Tsuna they had seen being taken away by the paramedics and the Dame-Tsuna sitting in the classroom with them now, were two completely different people. People outside of the class still considered her as Dame-Tsuna, but her classmates now only called her that because they simply couldn't think of anything else to call her. Most of them only knew her as that.
Just a few days ago, they discovered something that may have applied to her before she got shot and they just never noticed it, just like no one ever seemed to notice anything.
No one noticed it until Tsuna pointed out after class that Nezu-sensei had had a large coffee stain on the sleeve of his blazer. No one noticed until Tsuna pointed it out that one of their female classmates had cut her hair by a few inches at the tips but almost a foot for her bangs (she had really, really long hair), it was so obvious after she told the girl she liked how it looked (apparently, the girl was been very worried about how everyone would react).
They had started to wonder, not really knowing if their suspicions were correct or not, until one of the boys decided that he was going to get to the bottom of it once and for all.
During lunch and most of the class were having lunch in the classroom because it was raining outside, he sat down in front of Tsuna's desk with three cups and a marble, asking her to keep her eyes on the cup of which the marble was under.
The first one had been easy, but with every turn his moves became faster and faster until no-one was able to keep track of them without getting a headache.
Tsuna had twelve goes at it, and every time, she guessed right.
Once Tsuna finally asked him to stop as her eyes were starting to hurt, everyone in class were already sharing glances with one another.
So there was something she was a natural at after all.
Yamamoto had almost bounced over to her, wrapped an arm around her neck from behind, forcing her to turn towards him.
"Ne, Sawada." he said, staring straight into her eyes. "You're quite observant, aren't you?"
She had shrugged at this, gently removing the athlete's arm from her shoulders.
"I'm an artist Yamamoto-san, it kind of goes without saying."
What shocked everyone at this wasn't that she had claimed to actually be good at something, but that Yamamoto wasn't surprised.
"Right." he had agreed, nodding in understanding.
From that moment on, everyone in class had made an obvious effort to try and see just what Tsuna keeps doodling in between classes, and sometimes even during them (especially English class), and they had all been quite blown away at what they had seen.
Who would have thought that Dame-Tsuna could draw?
And so, the days continued, going much, much more smoothly than Tsuna could have ever hoped.
She should have known something was going to happen sooner or later...
She had been back in school for three weeks now and so far it had been pretty, uneventful, to say the least.
People from other years and classes had tried to bully her at different times over the weeks but they had always been pushed away by those who now believed that she didn't deserve to be bullied, mainly speaking, her class.
She blamed this for being the cause of her letting her guard down that afternoon.
She had been walking home from school that day, stopping for a few seconds in front of a vending machine, ruffling through her bag to see if she had any loose change somewhere in there.
She had been having a strange feeling of dread ever since she had stepped out of the school gates, but she hadn't payed any attention to it.
God she wished she had done that now.
As her attention had been focused on the insides of her bag, and her ears had been filled with the sounds of her own things being shoved around inside of it, she never noticed the shadow, or the sound of footsteps approaching her from behind.
That is, not until one arm had wrapped itself around her upper-arms and the hand attached to the other arm slammed over her mouth.
She dropped her bag, sending her belonging scattering over the pavement.
She tried, she really tried to get out of the arms but every time she tried the person only tightened his grip.
It hurt.
It hurt so much.
"Well, well, well."
That voice, she knew that voice.
"What do we have here?"
Mochida Kensuke, the seventeen year old in the year above her stepped into her line of sigh, his hands in his pockets and a predatory look in his eyes. The way he let his eyes wander over her body sent unpleasant shivers sunning over every inch of her skin.
It didn't help that he licked his lips.
"If it isn't the school looser."
Two pairs of laugher follower that comment.
Really? It wasn't even that funny.
Mochida stepped up to her, looking right into her face.
His eyes looked even more frightening up close.
He brought up his hand and she could feel his fingertips brushing over the skin of her throat.
She tried to move her head away but the man holding her was too strong.
"You know what we're going to do to you Dame-Tsuna?" he asked, bringing his face in closer to the side of her head. She could feel his breath against the shell of her ear. "We're gonna have some fun with you, is that alright?"
She could feel tears burning behind her eyes as she once again attempted to get out of the man's arms, she tried kicking, clawing, even biting into the hand but it was like the man apparently had no sense of touch for absolutely nothing worked on him.
Mochida just laughed at her reaction, followed by the laughter by the other two.
One was from the guy holding her, and the other came from someone apparently standing behind both her and the man.
She didn't like not seeing all the faces laughing.
With a jerk of Mochida's head, the man holding Tsuna began to drag her off, leaving her bag of things scattered on the ground.
All she could hope was that someone would find them, and somehow through them... find her.
With every passing second that the man dragged her, her fear grew stronger. Not only that, but also that familiar tingling sensation in her hands.
The tingling had become so frequent nowadays that she barely even registered it. But now, the tingling grew into something similar to a major itching sensation that would have probably driven her mad had her mind not been too occupied panicking.
She needed to get away from these men, but how?
There was an abandoned warehouse not too far away from where they had caught her, it was there they were dragging her how. Through the rusted doors and into a large, dust-covered hall filled with rotten grates and spiderwebs so thick they looked like pieces of dusty white cloths hanging from the ceilings.
There, the man holding her shoved her violently down to the floor. As she landed, the dust covering the ground flew up all around her, lying over her like a second skin and sending her into a coughing fitt that felt as if she was about to cough up her lungs.
Turning back towards them, Tsuna got a better look at the three men.
Mochida she recognized, but the other two... not so much.
The one who had grabbed her was tall, really tall, with visible muscles bulging under his school uniform. The other one was more Mochida's stature, but he too had a slightly more muscular frame than Mochida did.
So he was the brains and the other two were the muscles?
She realized with overwhelming dread that she would never be able to outrun these men should she ever be able to get out of their grips.
The fear in her stomach only grew stronger.
Was it just her, or was the temperature in the building rising?
Mochida stepped up to her, crouching down to stare at her face again.
"Do you have any idea how surprised I was Dame-Tsuna?" he reached out his hand closing it around her tie and lifted it from underneath her vest. "The girl we had been following since she walked out the school gates." he loosened the knot. "The girl who had looked so hot from behind, turned out to be the school looser." with a flourish, he removed the tie from around her neck and chucked it to the side.
Sweat started to drip down Tsuna's brow.
Seriously, was the the only one feeling the heat? It was like something was burning in there.
Mochida motioned for the men behind him to come forward.
Both of them grabbed hold of one of her arms, yanking it up from under her and forcing her back down to the dusty ground, pinning down her arms at either side of her head.
She tried to kick but Mochida had already straddled her at her hips, looking down at her with the scariest smirk she had ever seen playing on his lips.
Seriously, how was it that the three of them didn't feel that heat?
"We're going to have some fun." Mochida mused, reaching out to rip open her vest, sending the buttons flying all over the place. "Of course, you probably won't have as much fun as us." with that said, he repeated the exact same action with her blouse.
A scream of terror wrenched itself out of Tsuna's throat.
"Scream all you like." Mochida chuckled, leaning down over her. "No one is going to hear you."
Leaning down even more, Mochida pressed his mouth against her now exposed neck.
"No." Tsuna wined, trying to wiggle herself out of their hold.
Mochida's hand found its way to her exposed torso, stroking her skin.
"No." Tsuna wined a little louder, feeling absolutely disgusted at the feel of his hand.
Mochida just chuckled, his other hand moving down to her thigh, slowly wandering up to the hem of her skirt.
The heat was absolutely stifling now, like she was sitting inside of an oven.
Mochida's hand had almost reached her panties when everything burst.
"NO!"
Fire.
Bright orange flames lit up from her clenched fists, so bright in fact that it was impossible for the three men not to notice them, and when they did, they immediately yanked themselves away from her. Staring at her in absolute horror as she brought her hands towards her, staring at them as the fires only grew bigger and bigger.
Slowly, the flames started spreading over the rest of her hands, climbing down her wrist, only growing more and more bright, more fierce. And yet, she couldn't feel any heat.
This was even more frightening than what the men had been about to do.
Speaking of the men, they were currently running the hell away from there, leaving her sitting there surrounded by wooden grates.
In a panic, Tsuna tried to stand up, only when she did she fell over, catching herself on one of the grates.
The fire started instantly.
It started with just the one grate burning but it quickly spread to the rest of them, surrounding her in the bright orange fire. She spun around, watching at the fire started eating away at the walls of the warehouse, moving up towards the ceiling, the rafters, the abandoned ropes.
Everything, was ablaze.
She started screaming at the top of her lungs, frantically spinning around in the chaos.
The fires were almost covering her whole arms now.
Trying to get away from the fire, Tsuna found herself on the floor again, her back pressed up against a concrete wall as she stared out of the fires raging around her. Her screams had long since turned hoarse.
This was her fault. She had started this.
Tears started streaming down her face but before they could drip down her cheek, they evaporated in the heat that radiated around her.
What was she going to do?
Just then, she saw something in the flames.
A shadow.
A man.
A tall, lean man dressed in an expensive-looking black suit with a matching black fedora perched on his head. She couldn't see his face, the flames were too strong for that but she did notice tufts of black hair sticking out from under the hat.
What was so remarkable about this man was that he was standing right in the middle of the fire, and it didn't seem to phase him. In fact, it didn't even leach itself onto his suit.
For a moment, he just stood there, staring at her. Then he raised one of his legs and walked right up to her, acting as if the fire was just people on the sidewalk you pass by trying to get to your jobb or school.
Tsuna found herself trying to press herself further into the concrete wall as the man crouched down in front of her, looking her right in the eyes with his own emotionless onyx ones.
Suddenly, the man's hands shot out and grabbed onto her wrists.
Her eyes shot up in panic.
"No!" she screamed, trying to yank her hands out of his grip, but it was like trying to yank her hands out of solid rock. "Don't touch me!"
She stopped trashing when the man yanked on her, forcing her to look in his eyes again.
"Calm yourself down." he ordered, his voice deep, booming over the sound of the raging fire around them. "Panicking won't solve anything."
Tsuna's eyes fell on where the man was holding her. Only, in stead of seeing his hands turning black from the flames, it was like the fire was dancing around his skin, not quite daring to touch him, like something bad would happen if they did.
"Everything is going to be fine." the man's calm tone forced her to look up at him again. "But only if you calm yourself down."
It was like the man's calm demeanor rubber off on her.
Her heartbeat decreased, her breathing evened out.
Closing her eyes, she forced herself to calm down the rest of the way and as she did, the itching that had been covering her entire body from the moment her hands caught fire disappeared, replaced by that light tingling before that too disappeared.
She was calm.
"Open your eyes." the man ordered, and she obeyed.
The fire was gone.
Well, the fire on her arms as gone, the fire around them was still very much alive, still eating away at the building but Tsuna simply couldn't find it in her to care.
Her attention was locked on her flame-free limbs.
The hands clutching at her wrists slowly loosened before they dropped entirely.
Tsuna remained sitting, staring down at the palms of her hands with her tears drying on her cheeks.
How in the world...?
The sound of the ruffling of fabric brought her out of her shock.
Looking up, she saw the man holding out his blazer towards her.
This got him a confused look.
"Put it on." he said, not seeming to move an inch, not even a twitch. "You can't go home in the state you're in."
The state she was in?
Looking down at herself, Tsuna almost screamed, but she remembered what that had done to her the last time and forced herself to keep it in.
She had already felt the beginnings of the tingling and she really, really didn't want a repeated performance of what just happened.
Her clothes were ruined.
They weren't just singed, they were burnt. Some parts of her blouse wasn't even holding together around her arms. And yet. As she checked over the rest of her body, her skin, her hair, they were perfectly fine, it wasn't even covered in ash.
She looked like someone whom had put on the costume of a burnt victim and was waiting for someone to apply the make-up to finish the illusion.
If Tsuna's mind was boggling before, then she must have certainly gone crazy now.
Reaching out her hands to grab the offered jacket, she looked up at the man and his now hidden eyes.
"How is this possible?" she held the jacket in front of her body like the once piece of protection she could ever hope to get from him.
"I can't answer that right now." the man said, looking through the raging flames as if searching for something.
She really didn't want to hear that.
"Hurry up." he said, still not looking at her. "The firefighters will be arriving at any moment and we need to be out of here before they do."
She could understand why.
How could they ever explain her state?
Slowly, she clanged on the over-sized jacket, buttoning it up to hide the most of her body before she, gratefully, took the hand the man had held out to her, allowing him to pull her to her feet.
With his hand at her shoulder-blades, he lead her through the flames and out the burning building before he steered her back down the road Mochida and his gang had dragged her through to get to the warehouse.
Once again standing next to the vending machine, Tsuna stared as the man gathered up her still scattered things (to think that no one had passed through that passage during the time it took for the warehouse to catch fire) in a matter of seconds before throwing the bag over his shoulder. His hand returned to her shoulder-blades and he kept guiding her, only this time, the road would lead her to possibly the safest place in the world for her.
Her home.
Finally, they were standing outside of the gates to her house.
The man removed his hand from Tsuna's shoulder-blades making her turn towards him. As she did he held out her bag towards her.
"I need to go now." he said, looking at her as she took the bag from his hands.
"But what if-"
"You will see me again." the man cut her off, shoving his hands into his pockets. "We can't have a Cour DiLeone running around without knowing how to control her abilities."
"A what?" Tsuna asked with a frown.
"Not now." the man said, backing away from her. "You keep that jacket till I return, I have something I need to take care of first." she could practically hear the smirk on his voice. "Chao." and with a tilt of his fedora, the man turned around and walked away, leaving her staring after him.
Just what the hell was her life panning out too?
A/N: Well... what do you think?
Please leave a review and the next chapter WILL be out by next Friday.
Until then.